Happy Friday!
It's time for another #fridayreads, and this week, I have little of interest.
Firstly, I'm still reading my buddy read book by Kafka, which I'm sort of enjoying but not really understanding..
Then I'm also reading The Reader by Bernhard Schlink, a story about a fifteen-year-old boy, who falls in love with a grown woman. I do like the novel, but I am waiting for some more progress in the story, or some development in the characters. I'm about half way through, and I'm pretty sure I will finish it over the weekend.
What are you currently reading?
Purchase books on Bookdepository via this link, and I'll receive a small commission.
Friday, 21 August 2015
Thursday, 20 August 2015
Review: Perfume
"...Talent means nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything."
Title: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Jean-Baptiste
Grenouille never was anyone’s favourite person. Growing up in an orphanage
where he was always seen as the odd one out, he never really learned how to
love and be loved. But Grenouille is gifted. He can identify every single odour,
and he finds a perfumer so he can be his apprentice.
Now, the
subtitle of the novel does not hide the fact that this is not a happy story. Grenouille
becomes obsessed with distilling every single smell, and when he smells the
scent of a beautiful virgin, he decides what the odour of his perfect perfume
is going to be.

The story
itself is sublime: so clever, so original, and so mesmerizing. But I didn’t
enjoy the writing at all. I understand there have to be many descriptions in
order to understand what Grenouille is feeling, and more importantly smelling,
but to me, it was too much and it felt it slowed down the novel. Also, the
novel focusses very little on the moral choices Grenouille has to make and
doesn’t seem to judge this culprit. Now I sort of understand that, as it is
written from his point of view, but it angered me to some extent. This was
probably influenced by the film as well, because there we do get to see several
points of view.
Now, I don’t want
to spoil the novel but I do want to add that I didn’t like the ending. In its
own way, the entire novel is at least slightly realistic, and I felt the ending
lacked this.
If I hadn’t
seen the film, the reading experience of Perfume
would have probably been a lot different. So if you’re still interested in
reading it (and I must say, I would still be – the premise is beyond intriguing),
please take my advice and don’t watch the film beforehand.
The main theme
is love. Everything Grenouille does is instigated by his desire to be loved. Perhaps
that is the creepiest part of the novel: sometimes we may feel for Grenouille,
because, who doesn’t want to be loved?
Wednesday, 19 August 2015
Review: Blue is the Warmest Color
"There is only love to save this world. Why would I be ashamed to love?"
Title: Blue is the Warmest Color
Author: Julie Maroh
Translator: Ivanka Hahnenberger
Year: 2010
Pages: 156
Purchase this graphic novel
In this
graphic novel, we follow Clementine and her journey of growing up. It's a love
story, but also a story about friendship and about finding
yourself.

But
unfortunately I didn’t love it as much as other people did. For one, there was
instalove. That’s a deal breaker for me because it just does not make sense. A
crush at first sight, sure, but this level of obsession? No. I also wasn’t sure
of what I thought of the main characters. I understand that they are confused
and they feel like the odd ones out, but this theme seemed too repetitive. It’s
like young adults in literature aren’t allowed to explore who they are slowly –
they have to figure it out there and then, and easily come to terms with it.
Still, though,
the over-all story did impress me. As I said, no feelings were spared and I
thought was very well structured and beautifully drawn.
Monday, 17 August 2015
Review: The Dinner
"All these heads, I thought. All these heads into which everything disappears"
Title: Het Diner / The Dinner
Author: Herman Koch
Year: 2009
The setting is a family dinner. It’s tense, and we know
that something is off. Gradually, we figure out what it is.
I don’t read much Dutch fiction. This mostly stems from
my predilection for English literature, and as I was an English student until
recently I honestly only really read books in English. I’m trying to switch
things up a little, because I started to notice a decline in my ability to read
and write in Dutch. The Dinner was my
first serious attempt to restore this.
So I expected a lot of this novel. Everybody loves it,
not only the Dutch. Both for the plot – which is not something Dutch books are
known for – and for the writing style.

The writing was interesting and refreshing. But suddenly everything changed. What I thought was a novel classified as literary fiction suddenly became a thriller, and an intense one at that. Everything exploded and out of nowhere there’s a whirlwind of events. Although extremely cleverly thought out and well-structured, I did not like this shift. I can’t fully explain why, but I think it was mainly because I was expecting an amazingly written work of Dutch fiction. Now,
It may be just because I wasn’t prepared, or in the mood
for it. It doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the read. I finished it quickly, and I
didn’t want to put the novel down. But I didn’t feel satisfied upon finishing
it. I felt it lacked something, and I was disappointed at the change of genre
and pace towards the middle.
Friday, 14 August 2015
#FridayReads
It's time for another #FridayReads!
I'm not reading too many books at the same time now. I'm still reading Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, which I am enjoying, but not loving immensely. It is a novel narrated by ninety-something old Jacob, who is remembering his days working at a circus.
This weekend I'm also going to start Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Kafka, which I'm going to be buddy-reading!
What are you reading?
Thursday, 13 August 2015
Review: Frankenstein
Title: Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus
Author: Mary Shelley
Year: 1818
Pages: 240
Through
the letters the seaman Robert Walton writes to his sister, we get to know the
scientist Victor Frankenstein. In an attempt to create a perfect creature, he
creates a killing monster. But as we also learn the point of view of that
monster, we start to doubt Frankenstein’s motives and methods.
Frankenstein fits into two
of the most important literary traditions of the beginning of the nineteenth
century, as both Romantic and Gothic elements are at the base of this story.
Firstly, the novel is very nature oriented, which is according to Romantic
conventions. Scenery is described many times, but nature also influences the
character’s moods – when a horrible winter has passed, for example, the monster
feels happy when spring finally arrives. When Frankenstein chases the monster
through the Arctic desert, this scenery symbolises his useless efforts. Gothic
ties in with this in the sense that the locations are generally gloomy.
Moreover, gothic literature focusses on the supernatural as well as the
mysterious, and these aspects are certainly present in this novel.
Steven
Lehman argues that “[in] Victor Frankenstein, Mary Shelley created a male
character who yearned for the existential security of elemental procreative
power in the same way that she herself did” (50). This reading would thus mean
that Frankenstein is somehow a mirror of the author herself.
More
likely to me, though, is that his desire to create life, and his failure at
doing so, is in fact fed by Shelley’s feminist thoughts: men cannot procreate
without the help of women. Frankenstein tries to, but fails. This way, even
though there are few women of importance in the novel, this highlights their
significance.
An
important theme in this novel is the impact of science. By creating a character
like Frankenstein’s monster, Shelley expresses concern towards the developments
in this area, and in the end of the novel Robert Walton – who was the man whose
letters we’re reading – is convinced that scientific ambitions should never be
the main focus of one’s life. Rather, family, friendship and solidarity should
always come first.
By
most readers, the monster is seen as a helpless, misunderstood creature. He is
ugly and hence people are appalled by him, even his own creator rejects him.
While in exile, he tries to learn the ways of the world, teaching himself how
to speak and read – so in terms of that he becomes equal or even superior, to
the general human being – but still, people are scared of him, merely because
of his appearance. This aggravates him and he turns violent. Consequently
people become even more afraid of him. While I understand that the monster’s
narrative grants us insight into his motives, I could not fully sympathise with
him, and did not feel that being misunderstood justifies his actions. That does
not mean I’m on Frankenstein’s side, because even though he did not deserve to
be treated that horribly, I feel he could have been more active in protecting
his family and helping his creation.
Now,
don’t misunderstand my dislike towards the main characters as dislike for the
book. If you’d happen to read more of my reviews, you’ll learn I quite often
like unlikable characters in novels – mostly in classics. In Frankenstein, the
characters were all interesting, and especially the monster and the professor
did not lack depth. Though I have to admit towards the ending, they did start
to bother me a little bit, but this also had to do with the slowness of the
novel. Although for the first say 85 per cent of the novel this did truly not
bother me at all, probably because I was warned beforehand not to expect an
action packed horror story, towards the ending I was waiting for a conclusion,
for the whining to be over. That is why I couldn’t rate the novel five stars,
but it’s surely worth four stars. The story is original, interesting, layered,
and the writing is beautiful, especially keeping in mind Shelley was only
eighteen at the time of writing this!
Wednesday, 12 August 2015
Review: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Warning: this review contains spoilers.
I had heard of the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I was convinced I knew the entire plot as I had seen part of the BCC mini-series Jekyll. I knew thus, that Dr Jekyll suffered from some sort of dissociative identity disorder. What I was expecting was a ground-breaking psychological novel.
Clearly, one should not base their knowledge of literature on adaptations, especially not on only partly watched ones. Here is the real story of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and
Mr Hyde: Through the eyes and ears of Dr Jekyll’s lawyer Mr Utterson, we learn
about Mr Hyde, a man who abuses a young girl and pays off the girl’s parents.
It is quickly found out that there is a link between Jekyll and Hyde, as the
former has written a will which would leave all his possessions to the latter.
Years pass and nothing happens, until Hyde strikes again and kills a man.
Slowly but surely similarities between Hyde and Jekyll are uncovered, and
eventually we learn that Jekyll had developed a potion to which he became
addicted, which transformed him in character and physique, into Mr Hyde.
“With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to the truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.”
Title: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
Year: 1886
Pages: 144
I had heard of the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I was convinced I knew the entire plot as I had seen part of the BCC mini-series Jekyll. I knew thus, that Dr Jekyll suffered from some sort of dissociative identity disorder. What I was expecting was a ground-breaking psychological novel.

The
novella fits very well into its time and plays with the tradition of this
Victorian era. In the late 1800s, one “sought to fix and pin down events”
(Middleton x), while this story challenges everything that is thought to be
fact. Moreover, it is a prime example of Gothic fiction, which was the popular
genre in this time. Gothic literature “throws into question the idea of a
fixed, stable individual identity”(Middleton xii), of which Dr Jekyll and Mr
Hyde is of course the epitome.
This idea of double identity really only surfaces at the end of the novel, after
confessional letters explain everything. This is also the case with the theme
of addiction, as well as with some motifs such as the contrast between Dr
Jekyll’s house and his laboratory. Only when we know how the story is set up,
we understand these layers. Therefore, to me the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
is one of those which really only becomes interesting after having studied it for a while.
In his review of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,
Emmet Early shows that Jekyll is described positively, but is granted much less
description than Hyde, whose evil character is highlighted over and over again
(32). He writes “Hyde is obviously a constellation of a variety of vices, the
most prominent of which is violent anger”. While little can be argued against
this, I do feel that this completely disregards the fact that Jekyll is the
true instigator, as it is his addiction which allows Hyde to even exist.
Somehow it feels as though Stevenson disregarded the protagonist’s misdoings
and only criticises the consequences of addiction rather than the addict
himself.
I am
quite sure my apathy towards this novella is fed by my confusion regarding the
plot. I was constantly annoyed by the fact that Hyde looked so much different
from Jekyll, although I thought they were supposed to be the same in
appearance. Moreover, I felt it took the characters too long to figure out what
was really going on. Perhaps I should give the novel a reread, now with the
correct expectations, and perhaps I will be able to appreciate it better, and
give it a fairer judgement.
Works Cited
Early, Emmet. “The Strange Case of Ego and Shadowman: A
Review of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.” The San
Fransisco Jung Institute Liberal Journal 4.3 (1983): 28-36. PDF.
Middleton, Tim. Introduction. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde with The
Merry Men & Other Stories. By R.L. Stevenson. Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1999.
vii-xvii. Print.
Tuesday, 11 August 2015
Tag Tuesday: Unpopular Opinions Tag
I was awfully disappointed by If I Stay by Gayle Forman. When I heard a film was going to be
made, and Chloe Moretz was to play the lead, I decided I wanted to read it. I’d
heard so many positive thoughts I was convinced I’d love it. I didn’t at all. I
didn’t like the writing style everybody was raving about, and the characters
annoyed me. I did rate it two stars, just because the premise intrigued me.
2. A popular book or series that everybody seems to hate but you love.
I couldn’t think of one at first, but scrolling through my
goodreads, I found Seeing by José Saramago.
This is the sequel to Blindness,
which I haven’t read. Seeing was a
required read at uni, and it was stylistically challenging and in terms of plot
it was difficult in the way that it focussed on politics, which is not a
particular interest of me. Although I ‘only’ rated it three stars, I remember everyone
else in the course hated it and many people didn’t even finish it, while I was
quite intrigued and interested in reading more of the author’s work.
3. A love triangle where the main character ended up with the person you did NOT want them to end up with.
Luckily, I’m not reading too many books with love triangles,
because they generally annoy me. The series that pops into my mind when
thinking of them, is The Mortal
Instruments by Cassandra Clare. I still haven’t finished the series, and I’m
really not in a hurry to do so. Anyway, I remember really wanting Clary and
Simon to end up together in the first two books.
4. A popular genre that you hardly reach for.
Paranormal.
5. A popular or beloved character that you didn’t like
Frankenstein’s Monster. (Which does not mean I didn’t like
the novel)
6. A popular author that you can’t seem to get into.
Jane Austen. I’ve read Emma
and Mansfield Park and tried to read Persuasion.
I did not enjoy them at all. I do still want to give her one more chance by
reading Pride and Prejudice. Some
day.
7. A popular book trope that you’re tired of seeing.
Instalove/Love triangles. Both insanely annoying and
unrealistic.
8. A Popular series that you have no interest in reading.
The Selection Trilogy.
9. The saying goes ‘The book is always better than the movies’, but what movie or TV-show adaptation do you prefer more than the book?
Bridge to Terabithia.
The movie touched me so much more, but I must admit I saw the movie first..
Monday, 10 August 2015
Review: Brave New World
“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
Title: Brave New World
Author: Aldous Huxley
Year: 1932
Pages: 177
Mothers and fathers no longer exist. Children are
mass-produced, and are conditioned to agree with the government from the moment
they are born. They are divided into groups, some learn to hate nature and
books, others are taught to be promiscuous. There are even children who are
treated with medicine or are allowed less oxygen just so they can be the way
the government wants them to be. People are not religious, rather, they worship
Henry Ford, who introduced the assembly line. Though to the reader clearly a
dystopian world, most characters seem to be happy – for them, the government
have created a utopia. The protagonist, Bernard Marx, turns out to be less
susceptible to the conditioning, and he questions the ways of the world. When
he goes to a savage reservation and meets Linda and her son John he learns
about the idea of free thinking. As he takes the two savages back into the
city, the two worlds collide and the main question this novel poses becomes
apparent: is it better to be happy and ignorant, or to be knowledgeable but
unhappy?
The society in Brave New World may seem far-fetched,
but in essence, the aspects that are so much different from the world as we
know it, are extreme but logical consequences of the consumer society:
everything is based on satisfying (materialistic) needs and having a prosperous
economical system. Modern interpretations of the novel often look at the novel
as a ‘wrong’ prediction, as does Mark Frankel in his essay in which he proposes
a different version of the future of consumerism. He argues that the ‘real’
future will be based on the infinite number of choices people will have, rather
than the limit of choices (32). While this is a well-argued essay, I believe
Brave New World deserves to be looked at as literature and a critique rather
than a scientific work. Moreover, the future Frankel describes is not at all so
far removed from Huxley’s ideas: consumerism still feeds the world.
Not only is Brave New World great food for thought –
in the end you almost believe that ignorance is bliss – it is also a
brilliantly written novel both in structure and prose. We are introduced into
the world through a tour in a factory, which allows us to understand how people
are made and how they think. Because of this structural element the focus is
only on understanding the world for a very short time and we can start forming
our own opinions quite early on.
Friday, 7 August 2015
#Fridayreads

It's Friday, and that means it's time for a #Fridayreads! In this post, I'll share with you what I'll be reading over the weekend / next week.
The physical book I'm currently reading Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. It follows Jacob, an old man, recounting his days working for a circus. I'm really enjoying it, but I'm only about 70 pages in. I'm hoping to finish it before the end of the week, but I probably won't because I'm working Saturday and Sunday.
I'm listening to Yes Please by Amy Poehler as an audiobook. I was trying to find the perfect audiobook last Tuesday, and spent the entire day listening to snippets of books I really didn't enjoy. Finally I decided to try this memoir, even though I don't really know Amy Poehler, or like SNL. I'm enjoying it greatly. I'll probably finish this next week while cleaning and doing laundry.
Lastly, I'm reading Blue is the Warmest Color by Julie Maroh, which is a graphic novel. It's a wonderful but enormously sad love story, and I'm excited to finish it tonight.
These are the books I'm currently reading, and although I'm sure I won't finish them all by the end of the weekend, I think I will pick up another one, just because I read ebooks while in bed and the current ebook is Blue is the Warmest Color and I am finishing that today. So I've been browsing through Scribd to find the perfect e-book, and I think I'm going to be reading The Storied Life of A.J. Fickry by Gabrielle Zevin. All I know is that it's well-loved and about books. Sounds exciting!
What are you currently reading?
Thursday, 6 August 2015
Review: Alice in Wonderland
"Why is a raven like a writing desk?"
Title: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
Author: Lewis Carroll
Year: 1965/1971
Publisher: Vintage
Pages: 327
7 year old Alice is sat under a tree in her garden and she’s
bored. A white rabbit wearing a jacket and checking its pocket watch of course
immediately grabs her attention and she follows it, even down into its rabbit
hole. Curiously, upon entering the hole she starts falling, and keeps falling,
and falling, and falling. So begin Alice’s adventures in wonderland.

This novel works on so many levels, and all these layers are
worth exploring and studying, making it a book that can be read over and over
again. And you have to, if you really want to understand it. Linguistically, it
is so interesting, it makes you think about language, it makes you consider
every word you’re saying. However, sometimes the language is incredibly
difficult to understand, it doesn’t always make sense. This is mostly so when
reading the poems integrated in the story. They’re very hard to understand, but
they do add to the story.
In terms of the main plot, a lot happens as well, and many
things can be analysed in very different ways. I feel like Alice’s discomfort –
never being quite the right size, is something that likely alludes to puberty,
meaning the target audience is slightly older than children. But it also speaks
to me as a young woman who’s just finishing up her master’s degree and has to
venture into the real world, but doesn’t really know how to fit in. This ties
in with Alice’s realisation that not all puzzles seem to have a solution – some
things just don’t make sense, and you have to give in to that. This struggle is
continued in Through the Looking Glass where
Alice learns that she cannot control everything that happens to her, which is
represented by the chess game. Hashtag relatable!
I myself had interpreted the mushroom as a kind of drugs –
allowing all the weirdness. But I read somewhere that people see the caterpillar
as a symbol for sexuality because of its phallic shape, and the mushrooms –
given to her by this caterpillar – would help her gain control of puberty as it
helps her change sizes. This all worries me slightly, as Alice is seven… but I
am interested in hearing whether people agree and have evidence from the novel
for this claim?
All in all, I really loved this novel. It intrigued me in
terms of language, and I didn’t expect its themes to relate so much to my
situation. I was a little annoyed by Alice in the first book, but in the second
she was much less of a brat. What did
bother me greatly were the lousy endings to both novels.
Wednesday, 5 August 2015
Review: Station Eleven
"The more you remember, the more you've lost"
Title: Station Eleven
Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Year: 2014
Publisher: Picador
Pages: 333

I recommend going into this novel without knowing what it is
about, so I’m not going to give a summary. It’s even difficult to classify it
as one particular genre, but to give you a general idea of what the novel is
about, I’ll tell you this: There’s a pandemic which could have apocalyptic consequences.
We learn about the world before the disease, during it, and many years after.
This is the only book I was able to get through in the month
of June as it left me in a major slump. I don’t really know why, though.
Writing this review now makes me realise I have forgotten quite a bit of the
story, it hasn’t stuck with me as much as I thought it would. I have to admit
the feelings it made me feel, the impressions it made on me, they did last.
However, because the story didn’t, I can’t rate five stars, which is what I
initially wanted to.
Still, four stars means it is a brilliant book nonetheless. Its
structure is so clever and well thought out – we get to know our characters
through many years and even though it jumps back and forth, it never becomes
confusing. Moreover, it is very original in the way it handles the potential apocalypse.
Generally, books surrounding an apocalypse focus on the actual downfall itself
and direct survival, leaving to the reader’s imagination how the world will
continue. Mandel offers much more insight, leaving out the tumultuous years
right after the pandemic, skipping quite a few years. For this very reason,
many people whose reviews I read, actually disliked the novel. I feel, though,
that this is just the originality needed in such a popular genre. It’s even
more original because it also focusses so much on how the characters lived and
developed many years before the disease.
I would say the main themes of the novel are memory and
nostalgia. The story is driven by nostalgia, because our main character collects things associated with the past and the story builds around this. We’re constantly reminded of the past, as are the characters in the
future parts of the novel. Those who remember the past are nostalgic about it,
yet focus on moving on. The past is not a taboo, but they’re also aware that
they can’t go back. Because of this positive spirit of moving on, Station Eleven is not as bleak as other apocalyptic
stories. I’m not saying it is a happy one, though, a lot happens in this book,
and hardly anything will make you smile.
Tuesday, 4 August 2015
Tag Tuesday: On My Shelf #1
As I'll never really do a bookshelf-tour kind of post, I thought another way of showing off what books I own is the On My Shelf tag, originally created by Iain Broome. The idea is simple: random numbers which form coordinates will determine what book on which shelf you’ll be talking about. So if the numbers are 3 and 5, you’ll talk about the fifth book on the third shelf. I used random.org to generate ten numbers, so I’ll be talking about 5 books.
18,3 – Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
I bought this after I’d read and loved Fangirl and read it immediately after I received it. I absolutely
adored this book. I thought it was better than Fangirl, less cheesy, even though this one’s quite cheesy too. I
rated it five stars, cause for a young adult love story, it’s perfect.
7,19 – Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Almost two years ago, I saw an advertisement on a Dutch
version of Craigslist for a huge box filled with old Wordsworth Classics for
very cheap. So I got it and now I have over 50 books in this old series. This
is one of them, I haven’t read it yet, and although I’m excited to get to it, I
doubt it’ll be soon.
22,8 – Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
Another one that I got in that big box. I own many of Verne’s
books, because as a kid I had this abridged version of Twenty Thousand Leagues
under the Sea, which I loved. So as an adult, I decided to buy his books. Never
got around to reading them though..
1,4 – Little Women & Good Wives by Louisa May Alcott
Yet another Wordsworth Classic, but not one that belongs to
the older series. I bought this about a year ago, and have always been avoiding
any kind of spoilers of Little Women.
One day, a few weeks ago, my friend was talking to me about spoilers and how an
episode of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. talks about spoilers and this book. In recounting the
episode, my friend spoiled Little Women. I
tried reading it about a week ago, and couldn’t get into it. Now I don’t know
if it was because I was spoiled, though, because I wasn’t enjoying the writing
either..
1,11 – The Complete Novels of Jane Austen
I’m not a Jane Austen Fan. But you may have noticed I do
collect Wordsworth Classics (because they’re cheap, not because they’re
pretty). I own all of The Complete Novels collections they have brought out so
far, I think, and I haven’t read much from them. I prefer owning the separate books
as well, because these huge books are difficult to read.
That's all for today! Be sure to check back soon, because I have a ton of reviews to post!
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